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"Free college" means that the 60% of Europeans who don't go to college pay for the 40% that do. This would be the poor subsidizing the rich. VAT and payroll ta

"Free college" means that the 60% of Europeans who don't go to college pay for the 40% that do. This would be the poor subsidizing the rich. VAT and payroll taxes often make up a larger portion of the budget than income taxes. These usually are not progressive.

Jensson 5y ago
> This would be the poor subsidizing the rich. Poor people don't even pay for their own benefits, how can you say they fund education for the rich? Rich people are net payers and poor people are net benefactors, if some poor people got an education and remained poor then their education got funded by others, if some rich people got an education and remained rich then they just paid slightly less net to the system, their education wasn't funded by the poor. Under no circumstance do the poor fund the rich in this system. The main group that loses out are high income earners who didn't get a degree, and the main group that benefits are poor people who got a degree.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  >Poor people don't even pay for their own benefits, how can you say they fund education for the rich? You're talking about the US and maybe some EU countries, but definitely not all of them. Everyone pays VAT equally regardless whether you're rich or poor. Furthermore, income taxes in most European countries aren't as progressive as in the US.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Even when taxes aren't progressive the more you earn and spend the more you pay. You need to have an extremely equal society for people below the upper 40% to be net payers, I doubt that applies to any country in EU. And even then, net tax payers can all be considered to have paid for their own education, you never see a situation where poor people fund the education of rich people. At worst you can say that median earners fund the education of median earners who failed to leverage their education to get a better job. But it is mostly a wealth transfer from rich tax payers to poor graduates who didn't get lucrative jobs. Edit: Also at least in Sweden the worker movement lobbied hard to make education as cheap and available as possible. The cheaper and easier it is to get educated the less of a wage premium it becomes to be educated, making for a fairer society. It is a problem if poor students gets tempted to take a low wage job instead of studying just to make money sooner, it is much better for everyone if they don't have to think about that choice, which is why students gets paid to study in Sweden.
    - Aerroon 5y ago
      >And even then, net tax payers can all be considered to have paid for their own education, you never see a situation where poor people fund the education of rich people. But the poor people paying for it don't get the money back. It's going to some other government program, not necessarily to benefit them. >It is a problem if poor students gets tempted to take a low wage job instead of studying just to make money sooner, it is much better for everyone if they don't have to think about that choice, which is why students gets paid to study in Sweden. Why is it much better for society? Most people don't seem to end up doing jobs that are related to their field of study. Sure, there are studies that show that people with a college education are better off than those without, but you have a self-selection problem there. People who have the capability to do well in college will already do better than the average.
el_nahual 5y ago
This is such an attractive yet mistaken way of looking at the situation. The more accurate framing is "100% of people pay for 100% of people to have the opportunity to go to college". A good analogue is insurance: even though 99% of people might never file a claim, it's not 99% subsidizing the 1% the do-- it's 100% paying for protection from financial ruin that 100% receive. Your framing would apply if there somehow were a group--people with blue eyes, people born in May, whatever--to whom access was limited.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  >The more accurate framing is "100% of people pay for 100% of people to have the opportunity to go to college". It's not though. If you lack the aptitude then you will not have this opportunity. You will still have to pay for the ones that do go though. Oh, and they're going to be out-earning you in the future too. >Your framing would apply if there somehow were a group--people with blue eyes, people born in May, whatever--to whom access was limited. But this is the case though. Just look at college attendance in urban vs rural populations.

Jensson 5y ago

> This would be the poor subsidizing the rich. Poor people don't even pay for their own benefits, how can you say they fund education for the rich? Rich people are net payers and poor people are net benefactors, if some poor people got an education and remained poor then their education got funded by others, if some rich people got an education and remained rich then they just paid slightly less net to the system, their education wasn't funded by the poor. Under no circumstance do the poor fund the rich in this system. The main group that loses out are high income earners who didn't get a degree, and the main group that benefits are poor people who got a degree.

Aerroon 5y ago
>Poor people don't even pay for their own benefits, how can you say they fund education for the rich? You're talking about the US and maybe some EU countries, but definitely not all of them. Everyone pays VAT equally regardless whether you're rich or poor. Furthermore, income taxes in most European countries aren't as progressive as in the US.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Even when taxes aren't progressive the more you earn and spend the more you pay. You need to have an extremely equal society for people below the upper 40% to be net payers, I doubt that applies to any country in EU. And even then, net tax payers can all be considered to have paid for their own education, you never see a situation where poor people fund the education of rich people. At worst you can say that median earners fund the education of median earners who failed to leverage their education to get a better job. But it is mostly a wealth transfer from rich tax payers to poor graduates who didn't get lucrative jobs. Edit: Also at least in Sweden the worker movement lobbied hard to make education as cheap and available as possible. The cheaper and easier it is to get educated the less of a wage premium it becomes to be educated, making for a fairer society. It is a problem if poor students gets tempted to take a low wage job instead of studying just to make money sooner, it is much better for everyone if they don't have to think about that choice, which is why students gets paid to study in Sweden.
  - Aerroon 5y ago
    >And even then, net tax payers can all be considered to have paid for their own education, you never see a situation where poor people fund the education of rich people. But the poor people paying for it don't get the money back. It's going to some other government program, not necessarily to benefit them. >It is a problem if poor students gets tempted to take a low wage job instead of studying just to make money sooner, it is much better for everyone if they don't have to think about that choice, which is why students gets paid to study in Sweden. Why is it much better for society? Most people don't seem to end up doing jobs that are related to their field of study. Sure, there are studies that show that people with a college education are better off than those without, but you have a self-selection problem there. People who have the capability to do well in college will already do better than the average.

el_nahual 5y ago

This is such an attractive yet mistaken way of looking at the situation. The more accurate framing is "100% of people pay for 100% of people to have the opportunity to go to college". A good analogue is insurance: even though 99% of people might never file a claim, it's not 99% subsidizing the 1% the do-- it's 100% paying for protection from financial ruin that 100% receive. Your framing would apply if there somehow were a group--people with blue eyes, people born in May, whatever--to whom access was limited.

Aerroon 5y ago
>The more accurate framing is "100% of people pay for 100% of people to have the opportunity to go to college". It's not though. If you lack the aptitude then you will not have this opportunity. You will still have to pay for the ones that do go though. Oh, and they're going to be out-earning you in the future too. >Your framing would apply if there somehow were a group--people with blue eyes, people born in May, whatever--to whom access was limited. But this is the case though. Just look at college attendance in urban vs rural populations.